Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has admitted that putting pressure on the FIA often leads to the gaining of a “potential advantage.”
Wolff and Mercedes have been calling for the governing body to change some rules to address the porpoising issues the German team have encountered this year.
At multiple races, Sir Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have been put in significant physical discomfort by the porpoising of their cars.
The Austrian therefore feels that changes need to be made that would help the team fix the issue without suffering huge consequences to the speed of their machinery, to protect the safety of the drivers.
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Red Bull’s Christian Horner is against such changes being introduced, claiming that it’s Mercedes’ own fault that they have the problems they have and that it would be unfair for the FIA to give them a helping hand.
Wolff has thus far got his way, with a technical directive being introduced with the purpose of trying to resolve the issue.
He denies that he and his team were putting pressure on the FIA for sporting reasons, but admits it can have his advantages.
“When you put pressure on the FIA there is always a potential advantage, in everything, and we have done that in the past,” he told the Italian branch of Motorsport.com.
“But on this issue, I see it very differently, on several occasions there has been no hesitation in making changes to the regulations for safety reasons.”
He argues that the fact that they’ve already made progress in reducing the porpoising of their cars and have improved their pace recently shows that they only wants new rules introduced for safety reasons.
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“I could also add that today we have understood the porpoising problems of our car, we got the pole position in the last race, but that doesn’t change anything,” he added.
“It is irrelevant, we are talking about something that damages the health of the drivers, from the outside we cannot understand what it means to be subjected to those particular stresses.
“I strongly believe that countermeasures must be taken to be sure that next year this problem will be a distant memory.”
While Mercedes have closed the gap to Red Bull and Ferrari, they remain some way short of being able to fight the two for wins on merit this year.